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Fast Company
5 days ago
- Fast Company
Online scam uses fake ICE raids at Target and Walmart to steal personal data
A new online scam is exploiting fears surrounding immigration raids. If your 'For You' page on TikTok has recently shown videos of alleged former Target or Walmart employees claiming they were fired—or even deported—by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), it's a scam. These viral clips, which often rack up millions of views, typically feature young people in retail uniforms and carry clickbait captions like 'ICE deportations at Target' and 'Fired from Walmart.' Others make similar claims about popular chains like Taco Bell, Lululemon, McDonald's, and Crumbl Cookies. However, a recent investigation by the Daily Dot revealed that these videos are part of a coordinated effort to harvest users' personal data. One post reads: 'Target really had ICE waiting after my shift. They just fired me like I was nothing.' The post continues: 'So here's everything I wasn't supposed to say.' What are the supposed 'secrets' these accounts are exposing? Many feature bizarre or nonsensical claims. One video says: 'We're forced to listen to Walmart Radio every shift. Most of us hide our AirPods, but if you get caught, you're in big trouble. Everyone knows about the 'Walmart Groove.' Look it up.' If you're confused, that's the point. The Daily Dot suggests these may be AI -generated hallucinations, possibly inspired by the 'Walmart Shuffle,' a song commissioned by Walmart in 2019. The scam doesn't stop at fabricated stories; it also involves stolen identities. Creator @mama_mia016, who regularly films her real-life shifts at Target, confirmed to the Daily Dot that she's still employed and not behind the viral video using her likeness. Upon closer inspection, many of these videos include voice-overs or captions promoting 'free products,' 'discounts,' or 'gift cards' in exchange for completing a 'customer survey' on a separate website. This is a classic phishing scam. The goal is to extract personal data—email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses, even payment information—often under the pretense of charging 'shipping fees.' Victims rarely receive the promised rewards and may instead face identity theft or unauthorized charges. There's no evidence to support the employment or deportation claims. Major retailers like Target and Walmart have issued no statements indicating mass firings or collaboration with ICE. By playing on fears about immigration enforcement, scammers are baiting concerned users with alarming viral content. While TikTok has removed many of the flagged links since the Daily Dot 's report, new ones continue to appear. (Fast Company has reached out to TikTok for comment.)
Vox
01-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Vox
The one-sided intimacy of being a fan
writes about pop culture, media, and ethics. Before joining Vox in 2016, they were a staff reporter at the Daily Dot. A 2019 fellow of the National Critics Institute, they're considered an authority on fandom, the internet, and the culture wars. A Vox reader asks: What exactly are parasocial relationships and why are they so prevalent now? Here's a hypothetical scenario: You hear your favorite podcasters every day. You know their voices by heart. They're chatty and relatable, and they casually reveal all the details of their lives — and what they don't say on the podcast you can easily pick up from following their social media accounts. Eventually, you start to think of them as people you know — even friends. So, it's a rude awakening when you see them at a coffee shop one day and walk up to say hi, only for them to look at you like you've just accosted a complete stranger — because you have. The reality is that, no matter how close a person feels to their favorite celebrities, influencers, politicians, or podcasters, these relationships aren't reciprocal. When a person chooses to put time and energy into these one-sided relationships, we call them 'parasocial.' The prefix 'para' here takes the sense of approximating or substituting for something but not actually being the thing itself. These connections may feel social, but they aren't. Why, then, do so many people seem to feel like they are? Explain It to Me The Explain It to Me newsletter answers an interesting question from an audience member in a digestible explainer from one of our journalists. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. The easy answer to that is that humans are really good at projection. Witness all the humans who are currently tricking themselves into believing their gen AI tools are in love with them or are divine prophets. The more complicated answer is that modern-day celebrity is constructed from an interwoven mesh of elements, ranging from unintended celebrity gaffes to intentional marketing, that result in a public persona that everyone feels entitled to. That's because we all, in a sense, helped create it. But are we creating monsters? Parasocial relationships have been around for nearly as long as celebrity itself The aspirational idea that we can have personal relationships with people we've never actually met is an intrinsic hope of humanity. It's found everywhere from religion — Christians are encouraged to have a relationship with Jesus, a man who lived 2,000 years ago — to political systems. Think, for instance, of medieval soldiers who died fighting for the name of a king they were never in the same room with, nevermind the acolytes who go to bat for their preferred candidates today. The association of these feelings with intense fandom dates back to at least the 19th century, and they've been stigmatized just as long. At the time, pundits coined the words 'Byronmania' and later 'Lisztomania' to describe European fan crazes for the darkly romantic poet Lord Byron and the flashy pianist Franz Liszt. Then, of course, came 'Beatlemania,' which set the stage for an ongoing media tendency to dismiss fans as hysterical, oversexed young women — a misogynistic view that downplays the cultural importance of fangirls. Fandom can be deeply meaningful and positively impactful for the millions who are involved in it, and handwringing about parasocial relationships often presumes that fans lack the ability to distinguish what's real, flattening a variety of experiences and expressions. But it's also true that fans overstepping their boundaries makes things hard for the people they stan. Modern fan culture has shifted away from worshiping aloof Hollywood divas from afar and toward complex entanglements between fans and stars. This shift arguably began in the late aughts within K-pop fandom and grassroots gamer and vlog fandoms on YouTube and Twitch, then expanded into the influencer phenomenon, and finally — irreversibly — into modern celebrity 'standom.' While much of stan culture is positive and welcome between celebrity and fans — see the entire Taylor Swift ecosystem — much of it is overtly toxic. Some fans seek to control and direct their favorite stars' private lives, even to the extent of shaming them and speaking out against them when they try to have lives outside of their public personas. Other segments of modern fans stalk celebrities openly, proactively, and proudly, often fully rejecting the idea that what they're doing is wrong or causing their fave serious discomfort. In the early years of influencer and stan culture, people who hit it big often had zero media training and zero preparation for how to deal with their new fame. Increasingly, however, celebrities have shown a heightened awareness of the complex nature of these relationships, along with a willingness to speak out instead of feeling pressured to appease their fans. Last year, for example, Chappell Roan spoke out about experiencing harassment, stalking, inappropriate behavior, and bullying — all of it coming from her own fandom. In recent years, celebrities including John Cena and Mitski have asked fans to stop filming them, with Mitski claiming the experience of having to perform for a sea of phones makes them feel as though they're being 'consumed as content.' Most fans, however, never interact directly with the public figures they're 'consuming.' Instead, they're interacting with the public persona that exists between the person and their fandom. And because that public persona isn't entirely real to begin with, it's easy for the boundaries that might exist in a real relationship to break down. Why are we like this??? The word parasocial comes to us from sociologists Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl, who, in 1956, penned the essay 'Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a Distance' in a volume of the research journal Psychiatry. 'One of the striking characteristics of the new mass media,' they wrote, 'is that they give the illusion of face-to-face relationship with the performer.' They dubbed this new form of mediated encounter 'para-social interaction.' Around the same time Horton and Wohl were navigating this new space between public performer and audience, renowned philosopher Jacques Lacan was positing that each individual exists in a kind of triple state: a symbolic representation of the self; an imagined, often idealized, version of the self that we internalize when we envision ourselves; and then the 'real' self, the actual person who exists apart from the symbolic and imagined selves. The result of all this sticky interdependence is an increase in fans feeling entitled to pieces of their celebrities' lives. Nowhere is this triple state more apparent than with celebrities. Film scholar Richard Dyer first articulated the concept of a 'star text,' arguing that every Hollywood star exists simultaneously as themselves, as a constructed persona — a 'text' — that might mean different things to different audiences, and as the symbol they represent. The construct of 'Chappell Roan,' for example, is a glam queer pop idol, the deliberately camp persona of a Missouri native named Kayleigh Rose Amstutz. To her fans, she's not just a singer, but a representation of liberated queer identity as performed through a range of complicated love songs and power anthems. It's this public-facing persona that stands apart from the individual celebrity and becomes a part of the cultural consciousness. It is partly created by the celebrity, partly created by their consciously cultivated brand, partly created by the narrative their fans and/or marketing team builds around them, and partly created by the pop culture zeitgeist. The public-facing persona becomes something the public can help create, expand upon, and shape. The persona is the thing that carries meaning, that can be venerated or excoriated or projected onto. And it's the persona, not the person, with whom we have our 'relationship.' Fans rarely reach this 'relationship' stage on their own. Modern-day celebrity uses the tools of intimacy to encourage fans and take their place in the culture. How much time, for example, do you spend letting your favorite podcaster or vlogger talk to you? It can be easy to start feeling like you're besties with people when they're chatting at you for hours a day. Then, there's the marketing apparatus to consider. The celebrities, or at least their PR teams, often tacitly or strategically encourage fan relationships. Witness Jin, the oldest member of the wildly popular K-pop group BTS, bizarrely having to give 1,000 hugs to 1,000 fans upon his exit from his mandatory military service last year. The media undoubtedly plays a role in this invasive culture, as well, by encouraging rampant speculation about celebrities' private lives. (Remember Kategate?) The result of all this sticky interdependence is an increase in fans feeling entitled to pieces of their celebrities' lives. The celebrity's inability to control any of this is undoubtedly part of the tension around the parasocial relationship discourse. In many cases, even confronting the idea that an actor could be someone else outside of their professional persona can distress fans. It's by no means only 'extreme' fans who fall prey to this way of thinking. Think how many people on the internet were emotionally invested in John Mulaney's divorce or the Try Guys scandal. These media narratives play out the way they do precisely because so many people feel an intense amount of ownership over the lives of these people they've never met. Trying to repair this would mean having to undo over a century of prurient media obsession with the lives of actors, performers, and other famous people, as well as the subsequent impact on individuals who fall hard for their faves. It's just not possible. Parasocial relationships are here to stay — so stan responsibly So, what's the solution? It's perhaps too simple to say 'stan responsibly,' especially when fandom etiquette is arguably devolving faster than any of us are prepared for. But that might be the most rational way to approach the reality of parasocial relationships. If you find yourself thinking it's okay to share and interact with photos of celebrities in their private moments, maybe it's time to check your level of investment in them and their life. If you find yourself getting caught up in increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories that make you seriously question what's real and what isn't, it's probably time to step back before you get drawn in further. If you have kids watching YouTube, make sure they understand the context for what they're watching before your child starts to believe that the influencer kid she adores is her best friend. If you're convinced your favorite podcaster hung the moon, maybe temper your expectations a wee bit, just in case they backslide into weird conspiracy theories and bizarre political talking points. I'm speaking from experience on that one.
Fast Company
01-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Fast Company
This TikToker is trying to hit every McDonald's in the U.S. and rate them all
How many McDonald's locations do you think you've been to across the U.S.? Ten, maybe twenty? One TikTok creator is aiming to hit all 13,589 of them. Posting under the handle @donnyboys10, the creator kicked off the challenge last July and has since visited 275 locations across the country, including stops in Chicago, California, Oregon, and Arizona. Each McDonald's gets its own rating out of 10, complete with a short review and a tour of the facilities. And not every location is up to par. The Hollywood Boulevard location in Los Angeles came in at just 3 out of 10. The TikToker wrote: 'This very famous iconic location was absolute shambles.' The main complaints were the bathrooms, as well as the food being overpriced. 'I almost didn't even want to pay for it.' The Encinitas location however, scored a solid 9. 'Everything was available. Everything was clean,' he wrote. Even the bathrooms were 'super luxurious.' Throughout the challenge, @donnyboys10 has built an impressive following of over 128,000, with several videos racking up millions of views. In the comments, fans request to be tagged when he eventually reviews their local McDonald's. 'Im a day one, respect for you man',' one user commented. 'Bro is slowly getting closer to my McDonald's,' another wrote. According to the Daily Dot, @donnyboys10 averages 60 to 90 McDonald's visits a month. At that pace, it would take him about 15 years to visit every single McDonald's in the U.S. (assuming no new locations open in that time). When Fast Company spoke to @donnyboys10 over email, he was more optimistic. He estimated the challenge would take about 9 years to complete. For now, he's juggling his nationwide McDonald's tour with a part-time job and pursuing his bachelor's degree, which slows him down. 'At the start there was one other person involved and we did it together,' he tells Fast Company. 'As the challenge got harder and we needed to visit locations farther from where we were from, he stepped back and left the challenge to only me.' But that hasn't stopped him. 'I wanted to start this not only so I could go to McDonald's,' he explained. 'I try to pick places that I genuinely want to travel to. Besides going to every McDonald's in the US, it has always been my dream to go to every city in the United States.' Fans can donate to help cover the costs—or buy him a Happy Meal—via a GoFundMe linked in his bio. His favorite location so far? The famous blue McDonald's in Sedona, Arizona, where the traditional golden arches are painted to match the skyline and preserve the area's natural beauty. The worst? 'Between third and Pine in Seattle or most McDonald's in downtown Portland.'
Fast Company
25-07-2025
- Fast Company
TikTok reacts to alleged shoplifter detained after 7 hours in Illinois Target
TikTok has become obsessed with an alleged shoplifter who spent seven straight hours in a Target before being detained by security on her way out. Now, people are making pilgrimages to the Target store in Illinois. The woman, a tourist visiting the U.S., allegedly stole approximately $1,300 worth of merchandise from Target on May 1. After body camera footage of her detainment was uploaded to the Body Cam Edition YouTube channel last week, it quickly went viral, thanks in part to her now-infamous defense: 'But if I'm paying for it, what is the harm?' The 20-minute video has since been clipped and shared widely across social media, with segments racking up millions of views. 'How is it even logistically possible for someone to spend seven consecutive hours in one store?' one YouTube commenter asked. 'Do you just walk around in circles?' Some have dubbed her an 'icon,' with videos ranking the 'best moments' from the footage. Others within driving distance of the Target have taken it upon themselves to visit the location, the Daily Dot reported. 'Target lady Target tour,' one TikTok user posted, adding they have nothing better to do. 'A true historical landmark,' another wrote, showing footage of the actual door behind which the woman was detained. Following the viral story, the U.S. embassy in India issued a statement about the Target shoplifter, the Independent reported. 'Committing assault, theft, or burglary in the United States won't just cause you legal issues—it could lead to your visa being revoked and make you ineligible for future U.S. visas,' it stated. 'The United States values law and order and expects foreign visitors to follow all U.S. laws.' The super-early-rate deadline for Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies Awards is this Friday, July 25, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.
Vox
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Vox
How Christianity conquered the Hot 100
writes about pop culture, media, and ethics. Before joining Vox in 2016, they were a staff reporter at the Daily Dot. A 2019 fellow of the National Critics Institute, they're considered an authority on fandom, the internet, and the culture wars. 'We wanna thank God for giving us the grace to give him a little glory in this building tonight,' rapper-slash-country hit-generator Jelly Roll said onstage in May at the 60th Academy of Country Music Awards. The speech came during an exultant performance of his collab with Shaboozey, 'Amen,' which features the chorus, 'Somebody say a prayer for me / 'Cause the pills ran out and I still can't sleep.' The song details a religious devotion earned through a struggle with darker forces. 'Even a crooked road can still get you home,' Jelly Roll concluded. Jelly Roll might seem like a surprising mouthpiece for this kind of preachy moment, but the song is a hit even outside the country bubble. In a recent article for Christianity Today, musicologist Kelsey McGinnis identified the work of artists like Jelly Roll, Brandon Lake, and Thomas Rhett as 'barstool conversion rock,' a notably masculine form of music that sits adjacent to contemporary Christian music (CCM). But that subgenre is far from the only religiously tinged music — created by everyone from devout evangelicals to open agnostics, from country artists to rappers — climbing the charts today; a number of pop songs are likewise courting the divine. Benson Boone's 'Beautiful Things,' which arguably functions as a direct-appeal to God, was a ubiquitous bop for most of 2024. Alex Warren's 'Ordinary,' a love song that easily doubles as a Christian worship song, has slowly climbed the charts over the past few months to become one of 2025's biggest breakout hits (it's currently No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100). Vox Culture Culture reflects society. Get our best explainers on everything from money to entertainment to what everyone is talking about online. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. By establishing an industry-leading sound and a distinct identity, in a time of increased polarization around religion, Christian-coded music has finally broken containment and conquered the airwaves. Christian rock has been around for decades. What changed? Thirty years ago, evangelical and secular culture were very much divided, says culture writer and religious historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez. 'There was a much more cohesive, and even in many cases, all-encompassing Christian culture [for] kids raised in the 1990s,' she said. 'It was possible to be completely insulated from secular culture. … I certainly grew up with the understanding that top 40 music was evil.' Christian radio, Christian record labels, and Christian bookstores all functioned as gatekeepers, vetting everything they passed on to consumers. 'There was a lot of money to be made in distinctively Christian merchandise,' Du Mez said. 'But of course, it wasn't presented as a business. It was presented as ministry and as evangelism.' It was also often considered hacky or trite. 'The kind of joke about Christian culture is that they just copy what's happening in secular spaces and then produce things of lower quality,' Du Mez said. Switched on Pop's Charlie Harding echoed this. Christian contemporary music used to sound like 'whatever's happening in pop music, five years too late,' he told me. A fan of a secular band could usually find a Christian equivalent and listen to that instead, guilt-free. Like other guilt-free treats, it might not quite hit the spot — but for decades, many Christians eschewed the pleasures of mainstream media, even as their own art trailed behind it. Christian pop, however, was not the only form of Christian music available. There was also church worship music (also known as praise music). Worship music gained traction in the late '70s and '80s, when seminal CCM songwriters like Rich Mullins modernized the classic Protestant hymnal structure by combining it with the aesthetics of modern Black gospel, emphasizing a soaring, anthemic rock chorus that everyone could sing along to. This structure has come to define praise music ever since. In the '90s and early aughts, as megachurches and Christian conferences exploded in popularity, along with their concert-like worship services, worship music took on increased cultural significance. This music was meant to be sung by church congregations, intended to invoke or encourage religious euphoria, even conversion. It took a basic pop-rock style and imbued it with spiritual ambiance, codifying a big, church revival sound. Then came the rise of the internet. The increased interconnectivity of diverse communities, the subsequent explosion of the smart phone and social media, and the demise of the cultural mainstay that was the Christian bookstore all meant Christians found it much harder, if not impossible, to totally isolate themselves from the rest of the world. 'Sometimes that's just what they are and what they do. Sometimes that's their truth.' — Todd Nathanson, YouTube music vlogger This increased interaction with the secular world both coincided with and fueled the erosion of the Christian music industry, which also meant that the centers of distribution and influence for Christian art changed. Now, instead of getting Christian music mainly from Christian radio and CCM artists, many Christians began to encounter it most regularly through their weekly Sunday worship service — which offered not 'pop music, five years too late' but worship music. Now, musical artists who grew up in the church, hearing worship music week after week, were also hearing and interacting with secular music and culture. They could more freely mix and learn from different musical styles. And soon, instead of merely following behind pop music, Christian music instead helped spawn an enormously influential offshoot of its own sound — via the biggest band of the 21st century. Harding identified Coldplay as the through line between all that aughts Christian worship music and songs like 'Ordinary.' In a 2019 Rolling Stone interview, band frontman Chris Martin, who was raised Christian, spoke of being influenced as a child in the '90s by church music — by 'these beautiful, big songs.' That bigness, Harding said, is crucial to what came next. Specifically, Harding said, Coldplay's 2005 hit 'Fix You' popularized a song structure that's now ubiquitous among today's faith-adjacent pop music. 'Start infinitely small,' he said. 'You're down on your knees praying to God.' As it unfolds, 'You can see the whole cathedral around you. You're starting to have this divine experience.' That 'infinite build' structure of 'Fix You' now infuses the work of a huge number of highly successful artists of the '10s and '20s — think Arcade Fire, Imagine Dragons, or any number of 'stomp clap hey' groups — and is still featured by Christian-associated artists like Benson Boone and Alex Warren. Whether intentionally or not, their music has incorporated the vibe of a Sunday worship service, and that vibe is shaping the industry's sound rather than following it. This musical wave may have emerged, however indirectly, from Christian culture, but it's managed to transcend the awkward resonances of a post-Hillsong Justin Bieber, mid-spiral Kanye West, or the Creed Cruise. Where we are now: Masculinity, politics, and hollering to God As Christians lost the ability to isolate themselves from the secular world, they also started to see value in interacting with secular culture. Du Mez suggests that whereas before, Christians intentionally isolated themselves from the mainstream, in the current era, some are increasingly willing to accept and embrace secular influences because they increasingly conflate Christianity with a right-wing social and political agenda. Thus secular media and products that are not distinctly Christian, but which nevertheless reflect or promote their shared social and political values, are finding welcome among Christians who might otherwise disregard them. 'It's not always compatible with what most people would understand to be core Christian values or theological tenets, but if it hits [certain] masculinity talking points, if it provides an attractive vision of throwback femininity or even retrograde femininity, then it's embraced by these spaces,' Du Mez said. This new and evolving embrace of secular messaging arguably explains why so many Christians are warming up to (and pushing up the charts) country and rock artists who, despite referencing Jesus here and there in their lyrics, would once have been viewed by them as morally dubious. This contradiction serves as the essence of barstool conversion rock: moral messages coming from spurious messengers. In writing for Christianity Today, McGinnis marries barstool rock to both country music and to 'a web of crisscrossing cultural threads, including conservative politics, party culture, and evangelicalism.' While this subgenre overlaps with the much-discussed wave of 'bro country,' it adds a layer of respectability via an appeal to faith. If each of these songs involves a reckoning between the singer and God, 'even the reckoning is performed.' Indeed, what unites all of these songs across a broad sonic range is their confessional stance, as well as the performance of raw vulnerability from each male artist — a trait that modern men, especially ones steeped in a culture of conservatism, often have difficulty accessing. At the nexus of Jelly Roll's gritty but spiritual collaborations and Morgan Wallen exiting Saturday Night Live for 'God's country' resides a desire for something deeper than just the average dirty-booted drinking song. In so many of these songs, the singer aims to find a way to express his own weakness, a familiar cry among isolated white men that contributes to these songs' popularity. Music critic Craig Jenkins (of Vox sister site Vulture) told me he thinks Boone's 'Beautiful Things' succeeds at this project. 'Emotional, searching pop-guy songs will absolutely never lose steam,' Jenkins said. Boone, who is no longer a practicing Mormon but does not drink or do drugs, is an interesting case, especially in his aesthetics. With his spangled jumpsuits and mustache/mullet combo, he's somewhere between Elton John and Morgan Wallen. 'The signifiers all feel very queer, but the presentation is like, lacrosse player crushing it in glee club,' Jenkins said. Jenkins questions if Boone is 'carelessly laundering stuff that used to be edgy into a teetotaling package that is just coincidentally very palatable for the most crotchety sensibilities,' or if his choices are more intentional. He ties Boone to post-punk creatives like Panic! At the Disco's Brendon Urie and The Killers' Brandon Flowers, who like Boone were both raised as Latter-Day Saints. This cacophonic whirl of musical antecedents reads like someone who's going through a familiar post-adolescent Mormon journey of working out his identity beyond his family, church, and childhood. Todd Nathanson, creator of the YouTube music vlog Todd in the Shadows, emphasizes that the authenticity is part of the package. 'You don't want to be too cynical about this because Alex Warren is an actual practicing Catholic, and you can't expect someone to not let that inform his music,' he said. 'Sometimes that's just what they are and what they do. Sometimes that's their truth.' The other key to understanding this music is that while so much of its appeal is its perceived authenticity, its strength also lies in its ability to market a version of traditionalism that feels inviting, rather than alienating. Though artists like Boone and Warren may not bear much sonic affinity with Jelly Roll or Wallen, thematically they all share an ability to express a yearning for the identity of a masculine, working-class hero, eschewing delusions of grandeur for a smaller life. These songs seem to pair images of modern masculinity with visions of a traditional lifestyle, tailored to appeal to audiences that don't often find themselves reflected in pop music except through working-class anthems. Think of John Mellencamp's admonition that 'I can breathe in a small town,' paired with Warren's vow to 'make the mundane our masterpiece.' These lyrics are tropey, even trite, but they're effective in breathing new life into old populist narratives. The video for Warren's 'Ordinary,' for example, sees him pursuing a chastely styled woman (played by his real-life wife) with all the apparent wonder of a schoolboy seeing a woman for the first time. It's both a bizarrely infantilized version of masculinity and a highly romanticized, extremely traditional view of love. It's also hugely popular. 'There's a synergy of thought in bro spaces that aren't religious and ones that are,' Jenkins noted, with 'treatises on how Your Woman should dress on both sides of the coin.' In an Alex Warren video, that vision of femininity isn't so threatening. Nathanson also points to artists who dabble in faith-adjacent themes, like Hosier and Noah Kahan, as proof of the marketability of this traditionalist message. 'That kind of music is just doing very well right now,' he said — so well that other artists might be trying to gain a large market by adding 'a couple of 'Gods' or references to heaven.' 'A lot of people see that type of proselytizing as a quick way to gain influence and a quick way to gain access and a foothold and an audience,' Nathanson added. 'Rugged and questioning is lucrative posturing in deeply weird times,' said Jenkins, who's more cynical than Nathanson about the end result. If each of these songs involves a reckoning between the singer and God, he notes that 'even the reckoning is performed.' Beyond any cynicism, there are complex social messages to parse in this new space. For one, it's perhaps ironic that the regressive male codes of stoic masculinity that leave these male artists seeking outlets of expression are frequently heavily reinforced by the same Christian culture they're trying to find themselves within. Ultimately, Harding stresses the reality of a new conservative audience making its mark on the charts. 'I think that there's something that's really connecting with people, and I think that probably has to do with a lean toward tradition and representations of masculinity, which are currently at loggerheads in our world,' Harding said. Whatever it is, he says, people really must like it. 'I always believe that things that pop off do have an actual resonance,' he said, 'because it's so hard to make a hit.'
